Artistic Ability
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: Although he'd saved Phoenix's social life in the mock trial, Miles Edgeworth was no artist. [narumitsu] [prompt fill]


"Man, you _suck_ at art!" Larry leaned over the table, peering down at the colored pencil abomination Miles had created. "Say, he could take a lesson from you, Nick!"

Miles pulled his arms protectively around the paper in front of him as though he was guarding a test from potential cheaters. "I do not suck," he sniffed. "I am a student. What are you expecting from me, an art nouveau Mona Lisa?"

"I bet I could do that!" Phoenix grinned.

"I could, too, with a bit of time and practice. It's not as though art comes naturally, you know. I'm every bit as good at art as you are!"

"Hey, I've got an idea!" Miles and Phoenix exchanged a worried look. Larry's 'ideas' were rarely in cooperation with school rules or the basic rules of safety. "Why don't you draw each other? And I'll judge which one is better! Sound like a plan?"

Miles raised his eyebrows. "How do we know you don't have a bias?"

Larry laughed and patted Miles on the back. "Aw, c'mon, Edgey. You know we're pals, right?" He straightened, putting on a caricature of a flat, serious lawyer's voice. "I swear to tell the honest truth, the real truth, and nothing but the truth." Phoenix stifled a giggle. "Happy?"

Miles sighed. "I suppose that will have to do." Phoenix noticed that despite his serious demeanor, Miles was smiling slightly. It was one of those things that only Phoenix ever saw about him; he wasn't all seriousness and mock trials, he had a little smile that came out from time to time. Phoenix felt kind of special, being the only one who seemed to be able to see that.

Larry handed both of them large, white pieces of craft paper. "Alright, start! You've got until the end of art class!" He chuckled. "Man, I can't wait to see the turnout of this one."

Phoenix glanced over at Miles, trying to get a feel for the way his face looked. His sharp jawline and tousled hair that was somewhere between black and brown (Man, that was going to be hard to color.) and his brow furrowed in concentration. There was something almost cutely comical about how hard he seemed to be focusing.

"Why're you looking at me, Phoenix? Are you trying to cheat off of my drawing?" Phoenix suddenly found himself laughing at the amount of seriousness in his expression.

"No, silly! I'm looking at you so I can draw you better!"

"Oh, so you're admiring my dashing looks, then?"

"Not really."

Larry wrinkled his nose. "Why do you guys always say that icky girl stuff to each other? Keep on drawing!"

Phoenix chewed his lip, trying to get the shape of Miles' face down. He had a fairly square build, even though he was always getting knocked over and tripping during P.E. His features were sharp and serious, and looked "like a mini-me of the guys on Law & Order" in the eloquent words of Larry.

He looked over momentarily again for reference, and caught Miles staring straight at him. "Ha! You're looking at me now!"  
Miles sharply turned away. "Was not!"

"Were too!"

"Was not!"

"Were too!"

"Where's your evidence for that?!"

"I'm the witness, I saw it with my own eyes! You were looking right at me like you were studying every hair on my head."

"You can't prove that!"

"Larry, was he looking at me?"

Larry looked from Phoenix to Miles, then back again, then burst into a fit of laughter. "Are you guys serious?! Yeah, Nick, Edgey was staring at you like you were a list of vocab words he had to memorize. What of it, though, do you guys just argue over whatever random stuff happens?"

Miles turned red and went back making awkward, jerky lines with the dark browncolored pencil. Phoenix looked down at his own drawing, squinting at it. He'd gotten the face okay, but the expression was a little off. It looked too cheerful to be Miles. He decided against changing it, seeing as it was it was kind of cute in the drawing and it would probably get on Miles' nerves.

"Larry, are we just drawing headshots or full bodies?"

"What?"

"Are we supposed to draw just each other's head and shoulders or like, the whole body?"

Larry ran his fingers through the huge spike of hair in the middle of his head that wasn't quite a mohawk like he did when he was thinking. The hair in question was less of a mohawk and more of a hairsprayed disaster. "Uh. Just the head, I guess."

"Good! That makes it much quicker! I'm almost done, then!" Miles sounded surprisingly confident.

"I'll need a little longer, I think." Phoenix grabbed a handful of colored pencils. Gray and black for his hair and brown for his eyes, and maroon for the bowtie he always wore with his stupidly formal outfit that Phoenix was almost completely sure was his father's idea.

"I'm done!" Miles announced, crossing his arms.

"Okay, turn your paper over until Nick finishes. Just like in a test." Larry looked up at the wall clock. "Ten minutes left in the period, okay?"

Phoenix finished the shading on his drawing's hair, then looked down at the finished product. It certainly looked like Miles, except the drawing was a little more smiley and the drawing's hair was a little flatter. "Okay. I'm done, too."

"Sweet! Let's see 'em!" Miles turned over his paper, and Phoenix turned over his.

What Miles had drawn was...interesting, to say the least. He'd certainly gone overboard with drawing his hair, and had perhaps taken 'headshot' a bit too literally, seeing as the rest of the drawing's body was nowhere to be found. There was a little speech bubble, too, in Miles' impeccable handwriting. 'I'm Phoenix Wright and I love Miles he's the best.' Phoenix snickered.

"Does my hair really look like that?"

Miles seemed to be staring down at Phoenix's drawing with an expression of awe, but soon snapped back into his normal uptight face. "Yeah. It does."

"I have to say I agree with him," Larry added.

"Thanks, guys." Phoenix elbowed Miles.

"Well, anyways," Larry continued. "I think it's clear who's the winner here, I mean, Miles, your drawing is...uh…but...Nick's is more...artistic! And, um, aesthetically pleasing!" Miles glared at Phoenix, who smiled pleasantly back at him. "Miles, yours really does look like Nick, though."

"I told you so!"

Phoenix laughed. "You suck, Miles." He leaned over and pecked the other boy on the cheek out of some sort of impulse he hoped he wouldn't have to explain. This made Miles turn red (A sight which Phoenix relished) and Larry make retching noises. And when class was finally over, Phoenix grabbed the crude drawing Miles had done and stuffed it into his art folder.

Years later, while thumbing through files on the DL-6 incident from the desk drawer in his office, something bright slipped out from between the papers. Phoenix stared down at it, smiling at the crudely drawn spiky hair and the somewhat obnoxious caption that Phoenix had always noticed lacked a comma where there should have been one.

'I'm Phoenix Wright and I love Miles he is the best.'

Phoenix tucked it into the pocket of his coat, making sure not to mix it up with evidence, and set off into the courtroom where Edgeworth was waiting.

* * *

**alright so this was based off of a prompt/request by cocoames on tumblr. you can find the original prompt here: post/72265639349/i-want-a-fic-about-phoenix-showing-miles-up-in-art. anyways this was really fun to write and you'll probably be seeing more narumitsu from me in the future ha **


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